Students endorse Italian exchange program

Lucy Neylan, soon after her return to the University of New England at the end of ten months’ study in Italy, met up with her professor from Italy during his recent visit to UNE.

Lucy, who is in the third year of her Italian studies at UNE, took advantage of the University’s exchange program with the University of Macerata in central Italy to live and study within the linguistic and cultural environment of Italy.

“All our classes were in Italian, and I was living with Italian room-mates,” she said. “At first my Italian wasn’t that good – but it got better.

“I value the ability to speak another language, and the opportunities it offers for overseas travel. I studied Italian at school, and enjoy the Italian lifestyle and culture.”

She hopes to pursue studies in translating and interpreting after her graduation next year.

Alfredo Luzi, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Macerata, met Lucy at UNE together with Elisa Lonoce, an exchange student from Macerata.

Professor Luzi said that the exchange program, now in its sixth year, was progressing well, with between three and five UNE students travelling to Macerata each year, and one or two Italian students travelling to Armidale.

At UNE, he said, the Italian visitors did courses mainly in language and literature, with one of them having conducted a study of the Italian/Australian author Raffaello Carboni (1817 – 1875), who wrote the main eyewitness account of events at the Eureka Stockade. He added that there were now plans to enable students of international politics from Macerata to join the exchange program.

Elisa Lonoce spent Trimester 2 this year at UNE, with her studies including German language and the Italian detective novel. “It was a great opportunity and a wonderful experience – and I’m sorry I have to leave so soon,” she said. “I did some tutorial teaching for students of Italian, and they apparently enjoyed it. It was certainly an enjoyable experience for me.”

Now in the second year of her degree program in Foreign Languages for International Cooperation, Elisa hopes to become an interpreter in the European Parliament.

THE PHOTOGRAPH of Professor Alfredo Luzi and Elisa Lonoce displayed here expands to include Lucy Neylan.